An excellent show indeed!

I love the Fourth of July. I love celebrating our nation's independence, and I love thinking about the people who set on course what I still believe is the greatest nation in the world.

And, of course, I love blowing up a lot of fireworks.

We gathered at the Drake's, where we always hold our party. Step 1 was unloading all the fireworks from the deathmobile; as you can see here, Kyle and I did indeed survive the ride, and so did the many boxes of 'works.

After helping with party setup, we all then sat about, chatted, drank, sampled various tasty foods, and generally took it easy until it was time to grill the meat.

For a party with about a hundred people, we grill a lot of food: about 84 hamburgers, 72 hot dogs, and 12 veggie burgers. We used to do it on my household grill, but it was really inadequate to the task.

A neighbor of Dave's saved us a huge amount of time and hot, sweaty work by loaning us a very large cooker, which we now use. Having this enormous cooking surface makes it possible for us to grill all the food in about an hour. The photo here shows but one of several times we fully loaded the grill.

By the way, Kyle and I had the best burgers of all: double cheeseburgers fresh from the grill. Wow, were they good!

After a little rest, we did show prep, then waited, lit sparklers, and finally it was dark enough for the show itself. I have no photos to share--I'm hoping someone there will email me a few--but from my vantage point directly under the fireworks it was awesome and primal and amazing and wonderful and worth every cent.

I am always amazed that anyone who sees this show does not beg to join the launch team, but I guess most people are considerably smarter more sane more reserved than I--and that's a good thing, because without them, we'd have no audience.

I hope your holiday was every bit as good.